X-Plane 11 is a serious flight simulator. We wanted to see how well it performed on the iMac Pro compared to two Mac Pros and top spec iMac 5K. (Special thanks to Angelique van Campen, publisher of X-Plained, for her input and participation.)

Surprisingly, the 2017 iMac 5K 4-core with Pro 580 GPU was faster than the iMac Pro 8-core with Pro Vega 64 GPU in two out of three "C4" flights. Though not shown on the graphs, both the 2017 Core i5 iMac 5K and 2017 Core i7 MacBook Pro (15-in) also beat the two Mac Pros running "c5_test_flight" in "fps_test=3" mode.

How can that be? For one thing, CPU load never rose above 314%. So having more than 4-cores was not an advantage. As for GPU load, a maximum of 6% was reported.

Speaking of GPU, replacing the Radeon Vega Frontier with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in the 2010 Mac Pro actually produced lower FPS.

When it comes to X-Plane, it is hard to justify the costlier iMac Pro when a high-end iMac 5K is stiff competition. But if you are using the iMac Pro to run demanding pro apps and other 'real work,' it is nice to know it runs X-Plane so well.

WHERE TO BUY THE AMD VEGA GPUsB&H Photo Video sells Radeon RX Vega 64 and Frontier Edition. Check also with NewEgg. They are in short supply. Sign-up for Notification of Availability. Both also sell the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, TITAN Xp, and other Pascal NVIDIA GPUs.

Check with MacVidCards if you want an NVIDIA GPU that is modified to provide startup screen, full bandwidth, and eGPU compatibility.